Welcome to Innovate UK

Our purpose is working to drive economic growth and productivity through empowering UK businesses to leverage innovation for sustainable success.

We are at the heart of the UK innovation ecosystem, continuously refining our offer and approach to maximise impact, strengthen partnerships, and drive progress across diverse industries and communities.

Through strategic investments, targeted focus, and collaborative partnerships between public and private organisations, we enable businesses to develop and commercialise game-changing innovations, creating new opportunities to start and scale, and increasing productivity across the UK.

Building on our Plan for Action, we are shaping our organisation to deliver real economic impact in and through programmes, places, and people.

Through working in partnership with local leaders, attracting new talent and skills, targeting cutting-edge opportunities, supporting start-ups and scale-ups, and creating new systems, we are shaping the future of business innovation, and shaping the future of our UK economy.

If you or your business would like to join us in shaping this future, please do get in touch (support@iuk.ukri.org).

Our organisation

We approach all of our work from three angles.

Domains – We focus on achieving prosperity in the race to net zero, ensuring healthy lives and economic growth through our life sciences, food, and agriculture, and leveraging digital and technology for safe and sustainable productivity and economic growth.

Place – Working with partners, we are supporting regional development and international engagement, new skills and talent, and new collaborations to drive sustainable growth for businesses across the UK.

Products and services – We are investing funding, expertise, and support in accelerating future economic growth for the UK. Our world-class portfolio of products and services is evolving to meet the changing needs of businesses, research opportunities and communities.

We are committed to:

• Continually improving our processes to make it easier and more efficient for customers to access our services.
• Respecting the Nolan Seven Principles of Public Life, and the public money for which we are responsible and generating the biggest possible impact from that investment.
• Tracking the impact of our funding and sharing with our customers and stakeholders our impact on the UK economy, businesses, and people.
• Leading a culture to innovate ourselves, driving continuous improvement, being open and responsive to customer feedback, and being effective and efficient.

Technology is everywhere and impacts everything we do.

It plays a profound and fundamental role in our everyday life, from computing and communications through to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our homes and the creative technology we consume. The continued development of such technologies will be at the heart of the next industrial revolution. We are supporting some of the country's most innovative businesses in delivering the next generation of these technologies.

The priority technologies below have enormous potential to transform our UK economy. We work across these technologies, including regulation, data, and systems change.

• AI
• Engineering biology
• Future telecoms
• Quantum technologies
• Semiconductors

We aim to work with businesses to revolutionise a diverse range of sectors, including healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing, using the underpinning digital technologies being supported in a responsible and ethical way.

Innovation that is enabling people to live longer, healthier lives.

Keeping people healthier for longer is a global challenge. Maintaining health is key for our growing and ageing population and to do this demands nutritious and healthy food that tastes great, early diagnosis of ill health, and will require access to good medicines and health and care provision. That aspiration has many pressures, not least that current healthcare systems and budgets are under strain, and that global supply chains for food are prone to disruption.

We see that innovation can drive transformational change in food production, wellness, early detection, and treatment of disease.

Building on the UK’s strong foundations of research excellence and the economic footprint of our globally leading life sciences and agriculture and food sectors, we are working with UK businesses to grow, scale and increase productivity across these vitally important sectors.

We must innovate now to reach our Net Zero goals.

Our priority Net Zero areas are:

• Power: we need to transform our power systems while securing our energy future in a way that is sustainable and affordable.
• Heating: our buildings accounts for 23% of our emissions. We need to reduce both emissions, and the costs. This is a race to renovate.
• Mobility: our vision is for a 2050 transport system that enables the movement of people and goods from one location to another through seamless, safe, net zero, connected, cost effective, accessible and reliable means.
• Make and use: now is the time to reimagine materials and manufacturing with three strategic imperatives: Net Zero & Resource Efficient; Resilient & Responsive; and Technologically Advanced & Digital.

Reaching net zero requires a ‘systems approach’, focusing not just on new technologies and design, but also on innovation as a means of addressing the interactions and interdependencies of the ways we live and work in our society.

Through programmes focused on financing net zero projects, promoting net zero living, and ensuring access to critical materials, we are driving growth, attracting private investment, and ensuring a sustainable energy future.

We are unlocking new economic potential by leveraging local strengths, resources, and expertise.

We connect local businesses, clusters, and supply chains, nationally and internationally, based on their strengths. This approach is designed to provide opportunities for growth and prosperity across all regions of the UK.

In Place and Levelling up, we are:

• Consulting locally to develop and deliver national programmes that strengthen UK capability and improve accessibility to the organisations that apply, wherever they are based.
• Investing £175m new targeted support to clusters that drive local impact and encouraging businesses in places of focus to be more R&D active.
• Building capacity and increasing applications for support outside of the Greater South-East.

Our international activities are delivering for UK businesses and the UK economy.

Our programmes support UK businesses to collaborate, grow and scale internationally, by enabling them to find innovation partners, access global supply chains, break into new markets and attract new investment.

Our Global priorities are:

1. Partnerships: we open up opportunities for the UK to benefit from global innovation networks and partnerships. We do this by leading UK involvement and influence in strategic international networks including The European Network of Innovation Agencies (TAFTIE) for international cooperation for R&D, and strategic partnerships with the EU’s flagship Horizon Europe programme. Our engagement with these networks and partners helps showcase the UK’s innovation talent and expertise on a global stage, enabling others to understand why engagement with the UK and our innovative businesses is a positive force is for good.
2. Collaboration: we build and expand strategic bilateral and multilateral partnerships with leading research and innovation countries around the globe. We focus on selected industries, sectors and technologies, to expand and complement our innovation capabilities and offer UK businesses opportunities to collaborate, innovate, demonstrate and exploit their solutions globally.
3. Grow and scale: we enable the growth and scaling of innovative UK businesses internationally, by providing them with dedicated support that tackles the challenges businesses face while entering global markets. Our support, delivered through our Global Business Innovation Programme, Global Incubator Programme and Global Explorer Programme, provides businesses with time, resources and guidance to understand new markets. This means that businesses gain better market access to new customers, partners and supply chains, resulting in far greater export opportunities.

Talent & Skills

It is essential that innovative businesses can access the right pipeline of talent and skills – increasing productivity and embedding an innovation culture.

For the UK to be a successful global hub for innovation, we must fully harness the UK’s rich diversity of talent and create more opportunities for innovators. Diversity is a key enabler of talent and skills, which, in turn drives business innovation and supports culture change.

Innovate UK is taking a lead in this area, using our scale to develop a more inclusive environment for innovators.

We have launched the Innovate UK Unlocking Potential Awards. This opportunity is designed to release the power of diversity, whilst developing and delivering the talent and skills the UK needs.

Our Inclusive Innovation Awards funds and showcases businesses that are role models in developing innovations that centre on equality, diversity and inclusion in their design and development.

These complement existing support:

• Innovate UK Women in Innovation has provided 160 pioneering women with funding and tailored support to grow their business – giving them access to a growing Innovate UK network of more than 9,500 women business leaders.
• Innovate UK Young Innovators has given more than 250 young entrepreneurs funding awards and business mentoring to bring their innovative ideas to market.

In addition to greater inclusion, we must also understand and prepare for the next generation of skills needed for innovation

To do this, Innovate UK is:

• Working with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to launch an Innovate UK Innovation Skills Framework. This will be embedded in Further Education and Higher Education courses, helping to develop our future workforce
• Creating a Workforce Skills Foresighting Hub, working with the Catapults to identify and address the next generation of critical innovation skills gaps, supported by partners including DSIT, DfE and Universities UK.
• Upskilling UKRI Future Leaders Fellows through our business innovation training – we are working to enhance leadership and commercialisation skills.

Growth and Scaling Support

Innovate UK EDGE is Innovate UK’s national business growth and scaling support service. It is available to all dynamic small to medium sized innovation-driven companies, including Innovate UK grant winners.

It accelerates innovative businesses on their growth journeys with one-to-one support from 350+ innovation and growth specialists embedded in every UK region and nation.

Every year, we help over 8,000 businesses realise their potential by leveraging their intellectual property IP, achieving further investment and opening domestic and international markets.

For Innovate UK business growth support, visit http://innovateukedge.ukri.org/

Catapults help to accelerate innovation, grow businesses, grow sectors, and stimulate additional private sector investment in R&D in the UK.

Catapults operate in more than 50 locations throughout the UK, with ~75% of the Catapult grant funding outside London and the South East.

Innovate UK are putting more resources than ever into Catapults, with £1.6bn over the next 5 years (35% increase), driving even greater impact.

Cell & Gene Therapy • Compound Semiconductor Applications • Connected Places • Digital • Energy Systems • High Value Manufacturing • Medicines Discovery • Offshore Renewable Energy • Satellite Applications